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Deep sea challenge for MH370 search

The underwater search for wreckage from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 came to a sudden halt on Tuesday when the robotic mini-submarine Bluefin-21 exceeded its maximum depth and returned to the surface.

Bluefin-21 had begun its search on Monday near an area of sea bed known as the Zenith Plateau, around 1,800km north west of Perth, Australia, and close to where ultrasonic "pings" likely to have come from "black box" flight recorders were detected.

But after scanning the sea bed for six hours, a sudden depth increase triggered an automatic safety device, returning the mini-sub to the surface.

Bluefin 21 was expected to resume scanning on Tuesday, but search teams may now have to turn to other types of underwater vehicle capable of going deeper.

The AUV Abyss, a Remus-type owned by German Ocean Research group Geomar, could be readied at its base in Kiel and sent to Australia within two weeks.

"To our knowledge there are only two Remus type AUVs available, one is ours, and one is at Woods Hole (Oceanographic Institution) in Massachusetts, America," said Geomar spokesman Dr Andreas Villwock.

Dr Villwock explained that the Abyss mini-sub would not need any special configuration, and could be flown to Australia by air cargo and shipped to the search zone.

However, he added that no formal request had yet been received from the Australian authorities.

A spokesperson for Woods Hole said it had not received a formal request either.

Deep-sea records

The record depth for an unmanned craft is held by the Japanese mini-sub Kaiko, which reached 10,911m in the Challenger Deep section of the Mariana Trench - the deepest known part of the ocean - in 1995.

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